


Reach of Justice

by Mangokiwitropicalswirl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8380975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangokiwitropicalswirl/pseuds/Mangokiwitropicalswirl
Summary: AU created for an "X Files Revisited" challenge on Tumblr





	1. Terminal Intensity

8:17 p.m.

 

His first thought when the smoke from his gun clears is that he definitely hasn’t thought this through. His second is that Scully definitely would have.

 

It’s the second thought that hardens him, his blood congealing in anger until his face is rigid as stone. Blood seeps from the two men’s fatal wounds and pools like dark satin on his wooden floor. He’d shot one in the back as he entered the apartment and the other quickly in the face before the man could spot him lurking in the shadows of the hallway. 

 

What finally pushed him over the edge was the way everyone had spoken of her in the past tense. Skinner -- “she was a fine officer.” Was. Even her mother and sister seemed ready to release her. Melissa’s words of an hour ago, meant to bolster, only tortured him. “At least she’ll know. And so will you.”

 

That’s where she was wrong. He knows. 

 

This is what it feels like to die with regrets. Because make no mistake, Mulder as he has been is dead now.

 

He gathers a few papers and photos from his desk. It occurs to him that he doesn’t even have a picture of her. Instead he reaches into his pocket to wrap a finger around the thin chain of her gold cross. He thinks for a moment about keeping it, some maudlin trinket to pull out and gaze at in the days to come. 

 

No. He unspools it and drops it on the desk. What else is grief but love’s choicest souvenir?

 

He rifles through the desk for the PIN to his trust fund and shoves everything quickly into a duffel along with a change of clothes and the plane ticket. 

 

“Walk away and then never look back,” X had told him. But he looks back once at the streetlight angling over his leather couch, the sticky residue of all the Xs taped on his window, and the slumped bodies of nameless men cooling on the floor. His last bitter thought, at least she didn’t have to live to see this.

 

Then he walks through the door and out of his own life.  
___________________________________________

 

When Scully wakes, she doesn’t ask for him at first. Her mother and sister are relieved, attentive, constant. They keep her sheltered from any work talk, so it’s several days before she overhears Melissa quietly ask her mother if Fox has come by to see her yet. 

 

“Not Fox,” Scully interjects from the bed. “Mulder.” 

 

She’s surprised that he hasn’t come to see her, but also knows that in her condition the hospital staff has probably been limiting guests to family only. Still, he’s her partner, and the witness to her living will -- and never one to let regulations get in his way, she smiles -- so she thought maybe they’d have fudged the rules a bit.

 

“No.” Maggie sighs. “I haven’t seen him since the night they told us …”. She trails off. Melissa’s expression darkens and she shakes her head sadly.

 

“Mom, when did you last see him?” Scully’s voice is low and probing.

 

“There was a night,” Maggie turns her gaze away. “There was a night we were certain we’d lose you, Dana. Melissa went to his apartment, to let him know to come down.”

 

Turning to Melissa, Scully is wide-eyed. “I’ve never seen anyone so burdened, Dana,” Melissa tells her. “I told him to stop running around trying to get even with everyone. I told him you expected more of him.”

 

Scully takes a deep breath. She knows him well enough to understand he has now added her disappearance to the ocean of guilt that subsumes his life. “But he didn’t come,” Scully says with finality.

 

“We thought maybe he had visited during the night,” Maggie explains. “But when I tried to call him the next morning to let him know you’d come out of the coma, there was no answer at his apartment.”

 

“Mom,” Scully pauses, sitting up straighter in the bed, quickly reassembling her professional identity. “I need you to call Assistant Director Skinner and have him check Mulder’s apartment.”

 

“Dana,” Maggie protests,”You need to rest. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. I just don’t think he could face you. You have no idea what he went through while you were gone.”

 

“No,” Scully manages to whisper, “I don’t.” But I can imagine. She knows Mulder’s relentlessness, his tendency toward obsession, his capacity for recklessness. “Just please call Skinner and have him check.”  
_________________________________

 

It takes little time to piece the story together. Skinner scours Mulder’s empty apartment finding two bodies, a slick of blood on his floor, and his gun, two rounds missing. He had assumed Mulder had gotten the same call he had with the news of Scully’s miraculous recovery. Each of them never seemed to do anything without implicating the other, so when he strides into her hospital room that afternoon, it is clear something is drastically wrong.

 

“Sir?” Scully begins before Skinner can even sit down.

 

“I’m very glad to see you awake, Agent.” Skinner tries to slow her questions, gauging her state of mind.

 

“Sir, where’s Mulder?”

 

“Agent Scully, you shouldn’t be worrying yourself about anything right now. You’ve been through enough.”

 

“Sir, something is wrong, isn’t it?” She intuits from the grimaced expression on his face.

 

“Scully, what Fox Mulder does is no longer any of my business.”

 

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asks.

 

“I take it he didn’t tell you I accepted his resignation?”

 

“Resignation?” Her confusion grows. “Sir, no. I haven’t seen him, haven’t spoken to him. What’s going on?”

 

Skinner looks at Scully’s paled expression and debates how much to burden her with. He knows, though, that she is as relentless as Mulder when she’s invested. And to say she's invested when it comes to him is an understatement. 

 

“Scully, Mulder came to me last week and tendered his resignation. It seems he had gotten involved in some avenues of investigation into your disappearance that were outside the normal channels of the justice department.” He pauses, wishing he didn’t have to tell her the rest. “At your request, I went to his apartment. I found the bodies of two men we have yet to identify. Mulder’s service weapon was left at the scene, but it seems evident that he was involved in some kind of altercation, most likely as the shooter.”

 

The color drains from Scully’s face as a picture emerges in her mind, of a desperate, guilt-ridden Mulder who believed she was gone forever. One who would be willing to do unspeakable things to assuage his guilt.

 

“He wouldn’t do this.” Scully protests, “Not Mulder.”

 

“Scully, I know you don’t want to believe it, but it seems quite clear that he did.” Skinner goes on, “and if the evidence shows what I believe it will, we will have to press charges.”

 

“Then I’ll have to clear him.” Scully shifts, trying to swing her atrophied legs over the side of the bed. “Nurse,” she beckons to the woman passing by in the hall, “What do I need to do to get out of here?”  
________________________________________________

 

She starts with the Lone Gunmen, who are elated by her recovery. But when she begins to question them about Mulder, they exchange worried glances. 

 

“What is it?” Scully probes.

 

“We don’t know where he is,” Byers finally admits. “If we did, we would have told him about you.”

 

“What are you saying?” Scully pushes further.

 

“All we know,” explains Frohike, “is that he was going to leave the FBI. He wouldn’t tell us why, but we knew something was up. He was on the tail of somebody, looking for information about your abduction.”

 

“The next thing we know,” Langley continues, “he skipped town.”

 

“When was this?” Scully’s worry grows as she gets a clearer picture of his state of mind.

 

“Just before you woke up,” Byers explains.

 

“You have to understand,” says Frohike quietly, “He believed he had lost you.” 

 

Scully is quiet. She sees in their faces an untold story of Mulder’s desperation. She senses they’re afraid to tell her the depth of darkness Mulder has descended to. “Do you think he did this? Killed these men?”

 

“I don’t know,” says Byers, “But if he believed the men who took you were beyond the reach of justice, well…”.

 

“Do you have any idea what you mean to him?” Frohike looks at her wide-eyed.

 

Scully swallows a gulp. She is beginning to get the picture. She knows what she has been willing to do for him, almost from the very beginning -- trading a hostage for him at gunpoint, tracking him down at Arecibo, bailing him out of jail, the drunk tank, sneaking onto government property, stealing an alien embryo -- when his life is at stake, she doesn’t think twice. She doesn’t even think.

 

It seems he doesn’t either. 

 

“Guys,” Scully starts, “I need financial transaction records. I need flight manifests, and I need possible aliases. I can’t do this through official channels, for obvious reasons. I’m going to need your help.”  
_______________________________________

 

She rules out the possibility that he would have used any of the aliases she knows, so she doesn't bother looking for either M.F. Luder or George Hale on the flight manifests. With the Gunmen’s help, they’ve determined that Mulder withdrew a large amount of money from his trust fund at around 10 p.m. the night of the shooting. Calls to both his parents reveal that neither of them had heard from him, nor were they aware he was missing. For not the first time, Scully is saddened by Mulder’s family dysfunction. While hers faithfully kept company by her bedside, Mulder was preparing to leave his behind, and they never even knew.

 

Through her official FBI connections, Scully is able to keep tabs on the investigation of the two murdered men. They are foreign nationals with ties to the School of the Americas, a mercenary training academy, but are currently employed by the Department of Defense. Each has a dozen names and a half-dozen passports. Beyond the law, she thinks, remembering something she had said to Mulder early in their partnership -- “the government is not above the law.” But now they’ve both seen too much to believe that’s entirely true. So he put himself outside it, she thinks. For me.

 

For most of the investigation, Scully doesn’t let herself think about anything beyond finding Mulder and how they’ll clear his record. But at moments she pauses and thinks about what he has done, why he’s done it, and she’s dumbstruck.

 

This was the man who little over a year ago told her how nothing else mattered to him than finding his sister, and who day after day devoted himself to the X Files and the knowledge they contained, over and above anything else in his life. But Skinner had confided to her some of what Mulder had told him, how he’d pleaded with him for information about her captor, promising, “You can have it all, you can have my badge, you can have the X Files. Just tell me where he is.”

 

She had no idea. Scully knows how she feels for him, the tightening knot in her gut that has only seemed to tie her to him more tightly with every passing case. Everything between them has been unspoken, but not unperceived. Still, she had no idea he would be willing to go this far. That he felt this strongly.

 

______________________________

 

And he has gone far. He doesn’t know why he thought X would have sent him to Mexico, South America, or Western Europe. It’s obvious to him now that before pulling the trigger he should have thought a little more about which countries might not have extradition agreements with the United States. Just like he should have thought about putting together a contingency plan that included communication with the Gunman, and how he should have thought about using a different alias when he boarded that second plane in Frankfurt. 

 

He had used the name George Hale too recently to feel secure in using it again so soon. Add it to the growing list of things I should have thought through, he mutters to himself somewhere around the second week of his exile. He has ended up in Vilnius, Lithuania, of all places, on the distant outskirts of the newly independent Russian republics, in the middle of the chaos of post-Soviet political upheaval. A country without an extradition agreement. An extremely good place for a tall man of his ancestry with a penchant for dressing entirely in black to blend in.

 

X has arranged for the ticket out, but nothing else. Despite the considerable hurdle of the baffling Baltic language, Mulder has managed to book himself into an unassuming guesthouse amidst the warren of streets in Vilnius’s medieval old town. He spends his days wandering the city, muttering as he walks, trying to figure out a way to resume his research, waiting for X to contact him. Trying most of all not to think about her. 

 

The streets are filled with slim, neatly-dressed blonds with shapely Slavic features. They all wear a mournful severity like a fashionable accessory. He watches them as he sits at tavern tables drinking pale beer and learning to develop a palate for potato-based cuisine. He tries not to think about her. 

 

At night in the narrow bed of the guesthouse, under a single bulb that goes out when the city dims the power, he briefly lets himself remember the way her beautiful red hair fell across her face, how it made the blue of her eyes seem to deepen. How despite everything they’d seen, the bodies she had cut open, the tragedies they uncovered, her eyes never grew severe, never dimmed in despair, and always anchored him amidst the darkest of their discoveries. 

 

On the rooftops of a dozen churches, all the crosses -- Russian Orthodox, Lithuanian Catholic, German Lutheran -- make him think he never should have left her necklace behind, that he should wear it now, and kneel to confess his sins to whatever God might hear him. Maybe Scully’s God will overlook his unbelief and pass along the words he never found a way to voice while she was living.

 

It is the idleness that is slowly killing him now. He’d told X, “I owe her more than just sitting around doing nothing.” But now that he has taken his revenge, that seems to be all that is left to him. He moves through the foreign city like a ghost without the ability to cry or speak, waiting for instructions or an assignment. Waiting for a reunion he knows will never come.  
____________________________________________

 

Three weeks later, Scully is startled when she finds it. A flight manifest shows a George Hale took a flight from Dulles to Frankfurt, and then made a connection on to Vilnius. She’s at first relieved and then furious. How could he be so careless? 

 

With the criminal investigation ongoing, she knows a request for a leave of absence will only raise suspicions, particularly from Skinner. And anything she tells her mother will only open Maggie up to questioning and subpoena, which Scully would rather spare her. So she packs a bag and tells only the Gunmen, who equip her with a fake passport and an astonishing amount of cash. For the purposes of travel, she’s now Martha Hale. Not a very sexy alias, she cringes. 

 

What she doesn’t think about is “aiding and abetting.” Nor “accessory to the crime.” Or “impeding an investigation.” All those terms mean nothing in light of the fact that she’s pretty certain she has found him. She pauses long enough to think about whether she should say good-byes, a pause which nearly halts her entirely. But then she’s bowled over again by what Mulder has done for her, what he’s sacrificed to seek out the men who’ve hurt her. She owes him this. 

 

More than owing it to him, she longs to see him. She wants to see him see her, see the realization that she isn’t dead dawning in his eyes. She thinks she would sacrifice almost anything -- anything -- to see his face soften and feel his strong arms drawing her in. 

 

She catches the next flight to Frankfurt. And doesn’t look back.  
________________________________

 

It is early December in Vilnius now and in the dim winter light, the brightly colored walls of the city are blanketed in foot after foot of snow. Christmas market stalls have returned to Pilies gatve, the castle street, and Mulder walks it from one end to the other, up the slope behind the old fortress to the statue of the iron wolf for which the city is named. He watches his breath curl in front of him from between the folds of his twice-wrapped scarf. The young waitress, Valeria, at his regular cafe has taught him a few words, which he doles out sparingly when he wants to buy coffee or bread. 

 

He’s begun to go a little mad. 

 

There’s been no contact from X and he knows he can’t spend the rest of his days waiting out the non-existent statute of limitations on murder. His pathetic attempts at the language have only convinced him that there’s no way he can stay here permanently, which he has no desire to do anyway. So he walks. In the damp cold and the wind, he walks. If he walks enough, he thinks, he’ll walk his way into another life.

 

By now he has begun to learn the local habit of avoiding eye contact, of navigating public space with few social niceties -- the habits of a traumatized people in an unforgiving climate. So it’s only out of the corner of his eye that he catches a flash of red hair. He has begun to train himself not to startle at things that remind him of her, to breathe slowly and then open his clenched fists to let the memories of her go. At first it had happened what felt like hundreds of times a day, but it’s lessening now, to maybe a dozen times an hour.

 

This moment is no different. He is crossing the cathedral square at the base of the hill, training his eyes away from the short figure bundled in a long grey coat, the familiar shock of red hair just a lingering phantom of memory. But he can’t help himself from looking again, willing to pay grief’s high toll for a few minutes of pretending. She is looking around, stopped at a spot in the square between the old bell tower and the round white columns of the cathedral. Mulder slows to watch, the uncanny resemblance of her hair color and height torturing him a little. 

 

As she turns, she sees him first. Before his brain registers the shape of her slender nose, or the way the cold air has brought out the crystalline blue of her eyes, she calls out.

 

“Mulder!”

 

No one has said a word to him in days. No one on this continent has ever even said his real name. She’s just a ghost in the winter snow. She calls him again and begins walking carefully toward him on the icy marble.

 

“Mulder, is that you?”

 

He knows he is delusional. Grief-struck. But he keeps walking toward her, expecting her to dissolve into a flurry of white flakes once he reaches the grey form. When they finally meet, his eyes are wide and fearful, braced for heartbreak. Scully reaches her gloved hand out to cup his jaw as a smile breaks over her face.

 

The moment her hand makes contact, his heart almost leaps from his chest. Mulder smothers her in a hug, lifting her off the ground as he spins her around, her booted feet flailing near his knees. He hasn’t yet said a word, but his grin is warm and bright enough to melt the snow beneath their feet. Smoothing a hand over her hair, he says her name like a benediction, “Scully.”

 

She smiles up at him with brimming eyes. 

 

“How did you find me?” He asks.

 

“George Hale?” She replies. “You’re lucky I seem to be the only one who knows that alibi.”

 

“I am lucky,” he breathes, caressing her cheek. “So lucky.”

 

“What have you done, Mulder?” Scully’s voice lowers, “How on earth did you end up here?”

 

“This isn’t quite the place to get into all that, don’t you think, Scully?” He replies. “Besides, I think I get the first interrogation. Last I knew, you were in a coma and not expected to wake up.” His expression turns suddenly serious.

 

“I don’t know what to say,” she whispers, “I’m still here.”

 

“I never should have left,” he apologizes. “I should have come to see you. You would have talked me out of this.”

 

“Mulder, I was in a coma,” she chuckles. “I doubt I could have talked you out of anything!”

 

“I wouldn't put it past you,” his grin grows wider as the reality of her presence, her vibrant aliveness, floods him. That she is standing before him rosy-cheeked and shivering, her hands on his arm, and not lying lifeless in a hospital bed -- it’s too much, a miracle, an impossibility. A second chance. 

 

He studies her face for a moment and sees in her eyes the same pent-up longing he has long hidden behind his own. She is staring back a him with a curious expression as she nervously bites her lower lip. At that moment it dawns on him what it means that she has come to him alone, that she is throwing her lot in with his.

 

He draws back from her, his voice lowering. “Scully, you can’t be here. If they know you’ve had contact with me they’ll charge you as an accessory.”

 

She looks up at him, unable to put voice to the turbulent feelings in her gut. “Mulder,” her gaze dips as she whispers, her eyes tearing up again, “I had to find you. You know I did.”

 

“Yes,” he answers, lifting her chin with his hand to meet her gaze, “I know.” 

 

Scully brings her arms up around his neck as Mulder bends to swiftly capture her mouth with his. To Scully, it seems like the world slows its turning as she takes his troubled lower lip between hers, grasping for him again and again with her mouth. For Mulder, the world falls silent so that all he hears are her soft breaths and the liquid sound of their deepening kiss. His hands come up to cradle her head and pull her closer. 

 

White flakes dance under the lights around them like a snow globe, but they make their own warmth, melting into one another. Mulder pulls her in under his heavy wool coat. “We should go inside somewhere. Aren't you cold?” he teases, pausing to catch a glimpse of the white crystals that are sparkling on her lashes.

 

“Surprisingly, no,” she grins and stands up a little straighter. “Not anymore.” Maybe never again, she thinks. 

 

“I’m tempted to say ‘my place or yours?’ but since neither of us have a ‘my place’ in this scenario, we should probably just go where’s closest,” Mulder rambles.

 

“Show me.” Scully is breathless from their kiss, its implications now coursing through her body. She slips her hand into the crook of his elbow as he begins leading them up the street toward his tiny rented room.

 

After weeks of frantic searching, Scully finally feels her pulse slow as she falls into step with Mulder’s pace. Still, she can’t quiet all her thoughts and wrinkles her forehead to ask worriedly, “Mulder, what are we going to do now?”

 

“Well, there’s always international espionage,” he jokes. “There’s quite the market for it around these parts.”

 

“Do you think we have the skills for that?” She plays along.

 

“I’d bet we’re overqualified,” Mulder counters, “I would think extraterrestrial encounter counts as international work experience, don’t you?”

 

“I think we could spin it as that, yes. If it comes to that,” Scully laughs, her boots crunching in the icy drifts as she clings more tightly to his arm.

 

The night is cold but beautiful, the city’s noises muffled by the deepening snow, and the street lamps feather shadows of the bare trees across the white ground. There will be plans to make in the days ahead of them. But at this moment, they are just two dark figures making their way up a snowy street towards the only home they know, the one they’re making.


	2. Angels in the Architechture

S --  
Don’t follow me. Don’t try to look for me. I mean it.  
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.  
But not as sorry as I would be if I let you stay. I can't let you sacrifice yourself for me, not for some hollow personal cause of mine. If they find you with me, you'll be charged as an accessory. I couldn't live with myself if you threw everything away for me and my stupid decisions. Go home. Go be a doctor while you still can.  
I need to find out what they did to my sister. And to you.  
\-- M

P.S. -- I promise I’ll contact you as soon as it’s safe to.  
P.P.S. -- Valeria at Uzupio Kavine speaks good English. She knows me as George Hale.

Scully reads his letter a third time, this time her eyes register the sloppiness of his handwriting, the hurry he must have been in as he wrote it. The first read through, she didn’t take a breath. The second time, she had to grip the edge of the bed and concentrate on focusing, her eyes racing to the end of each line in hopes she had misread.

No. He’d just gone out for donuts -- or whatever the Lithuanian equivalent of donuts was. He’ll be back. It certainly couldn’t be the case that he’d left her all alone in this concrete-walled grey guesthouse, in a country whose name she can barely pronounce, a place where no one knows her name. Not after all it had taken to find him. No.

When she had woken up that morning, her first sensation was that she was freezing. Her cheeks were numb and she could see her exhalations in the dimly filtered light. After she pulled the scratchy wool blanket over her nose, she had sensed his absence. There was an empty space in the narrow cot beside her, nothing but a divot left in the lumpy pillow, and the lingering ghost of his warm body where it had pressed against her through the night.

She had barely leaned up on her elbow when she had seen the thin paper note on the bedside table. Now re-reading a fourth time, the cold truth settles into her. She realizes this was always the next move. Theirs was never going to be a blissful walk into a bright horizon.

When she had found him the night before, there hadn’t been much talking on their walk back from the square. Her things were still in storage at the airport, but it was too late to go and get them. There had been a vibration in the air between them, an anticipation that she hadn’t wanted to upend with the trivialities of things like luggage. Mulder had walked them nearly silently across a little bridge and up a gentle hill, into a gated courtyard and up a concrete stairwell to this spartan room. She had sat down on the bed and taken off her shoes, shrugging out of her wool coat slowly as she watched him. He’d seemed dazed and nervous, undoing the laces of his heavy boots and setting them by the door.

Their kiss in the cathedral square had somehow managed to convey everything they had to say to one another. But it wasn’t like them to go so long without conversation, and the longer the silence went on, the stranger Scully felt. Everything she might say felt like a disturbance of a spell they’d fallen under. Instead she leaned back against the pillows, pulled her feet up to her chest and slid them under the weighty covers. She held them back and gestured with for him to join her. So he had.

Both fully clothed, they wrapped themselves around each other. Mulder pulled her up under his chin and ran his hands up and down her back, kneading out the strain of her long travels. She felt his breath along her neck and it sent warmth tingling into her core even as it made her sleepy.

“I’m so tired, Mulder,” she whispered against his chin.

“S’okay,” he mumbled back, stroking her hair. “Jet lag’s a bitch. Just go to sleep.”

“I was so worried,” Scully had started, tipping her head up to try to meet his eyes.

“Shhh,” Mulder had soothed her, pressing a soft kiss against her temple. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

For a few quiet moments they had let their breathing and the motion of their hands do their talking, carefully avoiding any escalation of desire. Scully could not remember when she’d last been held like this, petted tenderly as if she were a frightened child. One of her hands had taken up a rhythmic circling on his sturdy torso, touching him again and again to convince her tangibly that she in fact had found him.

That was how she’d fallen asleep.

 

Now the ticking wall-clock tells her it’s late morning, but the light outside is barely bright, coming through the window at an angle her body interprets as unease.

Goddamn it, Mulder, she thinks. I don’t even have a change of clothes.

A few cold splashes of water on her face and a tepid cup of coffee later (thank you for at the very least stocking the meager kitchen with coffee), she finds a clutch of keys hung on a nail by the door. She pulls on her coat and boots and locks the door behind her.

They’d come up the stairs in the dark, so this morning in the light, it’s as if she’s landed on the moon without a map. She looks up and down the street, her body remembering the sensation of her hand gripping his arm as they ventured up a hill. So she turns left and veers back down.

She pulls his letter out from her coat pocket and tries to match the name of the cafe to the baffling shop signs along the street. The snow crunches under her feet, and then the road splits into two. In the Y-shaped intersection stands an imposing stone monument.

She stares up at the statue of an angel, its golden trumpet mute against the close grey sky, its wings still and stern under a dusting of snow. She feels watched, and not in a protective way. Warned, as if this is the angel set outside of Eden, forbidding trespassers who would try to find a way back into innocence. As she catches a glimpse of the Uzupio Kavine down the street, she briefly feels like Eve. It’s already much too late for her to think of turning back.


	3. Borderline

He avoids his reflection in the dark glass of the train windows. He can’t face himself right now.

There is a thin layer of frost flaked around the edges of the window frame and he aimlessly drags his fingernail through it, leaving little lines across the pane like a rabbit trail of his wanderings. Always circling, always forward, but rarely intersecting any others. Outside, the fields flick by in the darkness. He had hopped the first train out of town and doesn’t even know where he is headed.

As he had laid alongside Scully in the guesthouse, his heart steadying itself to the rhythm of her breath, he had not been able to quiet his mind. The rush of adrenaline at seeing her again, at seeing her alive, not lost forever underneath a tangle of tubes and ICU monitors, was enough to propel him past any worries that usually held his heart in check. And then there was the fact she’d kissed him back.

He’d led them up the street and into his room on the buoy of his joy, and it wasn’t until he held her sleeping next to him that his nagging mind caught up.

He couldn’t let her do this. How could he? What kind of man would let the woman that he loved join him on a sinking ship?

It was only a matter of time.They were going to find them, and they were going to charge them with the murder of the two men in his apartment. And they would go to jail, or worse. Maybe they wouldn’t even bother with the charges, they’d just corner them in some godforsaken town beyond the reach of civil justice and put a couple bullets in their heads. Scully had not been returned to life and health just to throw it all away to save his ass, not if he could stop it.

 

She had nodded off and started drooling as the jet-lag gripped her. He stared wide-eyed at the ceiling and came to the only sane conclusion he could fathom. He smoothed his hands over her hair one last time and disentangled from her arms. He wrote the letter with his back turned to her, and set it on the table without glancing at her face.

She would be furious. She’d hate him for this. It felt entirely too much like guiltily skulking away a morning after, even though there’d only been one kiss.

It would be easier if she hated him, he thought. It would help her let him go, prevent her following. Sneaking out in the middle of the night and leaving her helpless in a foreign country should piss her off enough that maybe she would simply catch the next flight home.

Now sitting on the train, staring at his hands, there’s the part of him that doesn’t believe she’ll just let him go. And another guilty part of him that wants it that way, wants her to keep on following his trails. Knowing she’s just a few steps behind will keep him moving, keep him from complacency.

The wheels squeal against the rails as the train slows. Mulder rubs a circle on the foggy glass and tries to read the signs along the tracks. They’re at the Belarusian border. He doesn’t have a visa. He has a dubious-at-best alibi and a passport that by now will send up dozens of red flags. He looks nervously around at the five or six dark-coated passengers, mostly dozing against the seat backs. He shifts and starts to gather up his things. Maybe he can make it out the back end of the train before passport control makes it to this car.

Mulder stands and pulls his small duffel off the rack above and steps into the car’s rear entryway. He slides beneath the swinging chain that blocks the passageway to the next car back, then straddles the jostling gangway between the two. The train has almost rumbled to a stop, and flickering through the slit between the cars, he can see the line of border officials on the platform. He shifts his weight and steps across the metal plates.

Before he knows what’s happening, an arm has shoved him from behind into the squalid toilet closet. The gruff voice in his left ear is familiar.

“Get off this train immediately, Agent,” he barks.

“What does it look I was trying to do?” Mulder says sarcastically as he turns and faces X, caught between the desire to punch him and a palpable wash of relief. “Nice of you to finally show up.”

“No time for pleasantries,” X retorts. “Your passport’s flagged.”

“How’d you find me?”

“We had your partner followed,” X explains. “She may be good at following your tracks, but she’s not too good at covering her own.”

“If you put her in danger...” the words rush from Mulder’s mouth and he moves threateningly toward X, nearly losing balance as the train grinds to a halt.

“Calm down, mister Mulder. Agent Scully is being taken care of.”

“That’s just it,” Mulder answers. “I’ve seen how you like to take care of things, and I’m not sure I like your methods.”

“Do you think we’d have let her get this far and leave her unprotected?” X replies. “You just worry about getting yourself off this train and out of sight or none of that will matter.”

“Why are you still helping me?” Mulder looks piercingly at X, suspicious and confused.

“Don’t make me question my involvement, mister Mulder.” X’s tone is biting. “I have my own sins to atone for. Now here.” X slides a leather passport folio into the open front of Mulder’s jacket and nods for him to go.

Mulder scuttles down the aisle of the train car and swings open the last door to hop down on the tracks. He expects running and shouting, if not from the border guards, then from the conductor onboard. But it’s the middle of the night, on a routine run. The patrol guards are yawningly making their way from passenger to passenger, their eyes giving only cursory glances at the names and corresponding visas. The conductor has had too much vodka and is slumped sleeping against the rear wall of the car. It’s just another night, and nothing’s sinister.

Mulder steps into the shadows of the tiny station and watches as the train jolts back to life. The patrol goes back to warm themselves inside with spiked coffee and beer. Once everything is quiet, Mulder opens the folio and some documents slide out. A weathered passport with his own picture bears the name “Yuri Kaplan.” There’s a ticket to Kiev departing the next morning, and one small slip of paper with the word Janowska scribbled on it in Xs infuriatingly cryptic scrawl.

“Would it absolutely kill him to spell things out a little more?” Mulder thinks and makes his way out toward the highway. He’ll hitchhike back into the city and catch this train to Kiev.

He pulls his coat up around his neck and wishes for a hat, maybe something that will help him look a little more like a Yuri, and less like Fox. Trudging toward the city, he remembers -- the last time he had heard from her after her request for reassignment, a least a year ago now he would guess, she was stationed at the FBI attaché offices in Kiev.

“Diana,” he shakes his head and shrugs imagining.“I bet you’d never thought you’d see me again.”


	4. Bread and Coffee

It would never have occurred to her to check the mailbox. It’s not like he’d been in town long enough to start forwarding his mail, and anyway, mail seems a little bit conspicuous. Scully tilts the metal slot toward her and reaches down inside.

Tucked in the bottom corner of the box, there is a thick manila envelope, closed by one of those little brown strings that circle around a knob. She lifts it out and unwinds the cord, then stops herself and looks up and down the hall. It would be better to wait and open this inside.

 

She’s grateful that amidst every other stupid thing that Mulder’s done this week, he at least had had the sense to provide her with one point of contact. The coffeehouse is quickly becoming her home base. Valeria remembers him -- how couldn’t she?

When Scully stumbles into Uzupio Kavine the morning Mulder leaves her, she tries to be discrete. She orders the first thing at the top of the menu, pointing and nodding seems to be enough. It’s a tiny cup of thick espresso, served in ceramic, along with a saucer of sugar cube packets and a pitcher of cream. She drinks three cups while she listens to the workers talk, listening closely for their names until she identifies the young blonde girl who she hears called Valeria.

Valeria remembers “George,” yes. Scully can see from the glimmer in her eye that he had charmed her despite himself, because everything she tells Scully makes it sound like he’d been solidly depressed.

“He always looked sad,” Valeria tells her. “Like he lost something he can’t get back.”

Scully nods. “He always looked a little like that,” she replies softly.

Valeria helps her call a taxi to the airport so she that can retrieve her luggage. She writes down the intersection of the guesthouse so Scully can show the driver where to go. She points out where to go to buy a little food.

She brings her a plate. “Fried bread,” Valeria tells her as she sets it down. Scully raises an eyebrow. “You look hungry.” The steaming pile of cheese-and-garlic-covered bread is not Scully’s usual fare, but she is dizzy with hunger and the wavering stomach that accompanies changed time zones. She wolfs it down.

In the first couple days without him, Scully, good training that she’s had, orients herself. She locates the US Consulate and nearly goes inside before remembering she can’t. She sucks in a hasty breath and walks back down the steps. She will have to do this all outside the law -- or at least outside of all the protocol she knows.

She stays busy enough during daylight hours to keep her feelings safely tucked away. At night in the quiet room, the shadows creep up the walls and she turns toward the empty space where he’d laid next to her the night they’d reunited. She swallows hard against the lump that wells up in her throat.

At first she entertains the wish she hadn’t dropped so quickly off to sleep on the night they’d been together. She lets a few moments fervid imaginings warm her, twist in her gut, flush over her face. And then she feels intense relief that she doesn’t have those memories. The one kiss is enough for her to build a little altar in her mind, and ring it with resolve.

She’s angry at his over-developed sense of nobility, but is determined to ignore his letter’s pleas. She found him once, and she can do it once again. She just doesn’t have the faintest thought of where to start.

Halfway through her first week there, Scully makes her morning stop at the kavine where Valeria brings her a small cup of cappuccino. When Scully raises the foamy coffee to her lips, she sees that there’s a slip of paper tucked beneath the cup. Turning it over in her hand, she reads just one word: mailbox.

Scully looks around the room, taking it all in without catching anybody’s eye or drawing attention to herself. Nothing’s unusual. When Valeria brings the bill, Scully uncurls her fingers from her palm to show her the paper.

“Who brought this?” Scully whispers.

Valeria looks surprised. “I thought you know him?”

“Know who?”

“The dark skinned man who came to look for you. He told me he is your friend.”

“Dark-skinned man?” Scully’s mind is racing through the possibilities.

“He said he is a friend of you and George. He asked to give this message.”

“When did you last see him, Valeria?” Scully asks.

“Yesterday,” she shrugs. “I didn’t think about it.”

“Thank you.” Scully squeezes her hand and drops a few coins to pay for her drink onto the tray with the bill.

 

The packet she draws out of the mailbox is promisingly hefty, as if its weight conveys the direction she is looking for. She takes the time to relock the apartment door from the inside and slides the metal chain across the lock before spilling the contents of the file across the tabletop.

Her eyes quickly take in the familiar blue shape of a US passport, a ticket booklet, a map and a couple train timetables, and resting on top of everything, one plain white piece of paper with a couple short handwritten lines. She reads that first.

Agent -- You will need these. I cannot stress how vital it is that you not have contact with Mulder. Do not follow him. When the the investigation clears you, I will contact you again, but until then use these to disappear.

Scully opens up the passport, which isn't new, but somehow contains a recent picture of her and forged record of her arrival in the country. Her name is Ana Collins now. The tickets have her on a train to Geneva, departing in two days.

Geneva. Scully thinks a moment. The UN. She turns the papers over again and again, looking for more information. Unlike Mulder who always seems to obey commands to “jump” by jumping as high as he can, Scully doesn’t know if trusting his informant is the best course of action. She immediately resents being given travel plans and ultimatums. She feels like a wind-up toy, set down on a table and in danger of toppling off the edge. Or like a chess piece on a board much too large for her to fathom. Whoever this informant is, he has his own agenda, Scully thinks, that much is clear.

Still, she doesn't really have much of a choice but to take the tools he’s offered. She flips through the packet of train timetables. Slipped into the center of the book is another piece of paper with four letters scrawled in the same handwriting as the note: SRSG.


End file.
